Some bits and pieces on the #debill

The Digital Economy Act is now law, after being rushed through in the washup in the last days of a now-dissolved Parliament. Even though the final result was by and large a crushing disappointment – the level of debate and interaction with the bill online has been remarkable. For me, it was the first time I watched a House of Commons debate live with close interest since (I think) the 2006 Terrorism Act (something which helped dwindle my interest in politics somewhat. By now we’ve all gone over a million times the various nasty aspects of a law that will prove counter to free expression and the economy, but indulge me with a few final thoughts.

Parliament’s processes are broken
The wash-up is a truly ludicrous process; while I can just about see the point of making sure finance bills and the like are approved so that the Treasury still has money to spend while Parliament is dissolved, rushing through any sort of complicated or controversial legislation is madness. But of course, the wash-up is only the symptom, not the problem itself. The state opening of Parliament was on November 18, and this session of Parliament could only have lasted five months at best. Yet 16 bills were proposed by the government, only two fewer than the previous year’s full session. Allowing the government to produce such unwieldy programmes, and to make Parliament sit for less than half a year is ridiculous; as is having letting the government determine the timing of an election. A fixed-term Parliament, with elections and state openings timed sensibly to allow full programmes of debate, would have prevented this débacle.

Much hoo-har has been made about the low attendance at the Bill’s second and third readings. By the end of the third reading I estimated there were about 75 MPs in the House chamber. Yet 240 voted; Phil Gyford has attempted to come to their defence saying they may have had other work to do; sadly, as Bill Cash pointed out during the debate, the vast majority of those voting were waiting outside, some in the bar, having been told by the whips to turn up as and when. It’s ridiculous to expect MPs who did not attend a debate to be have the right to vote in it; you could have some form of swipe card system – they can clock in and out of debates and committees, and unless they spent, say, at least half of their time in a particular reading or committee stage for a bill, then they can’t vote in the division. Intrusive surveillance at its finest, but then they should get a taste of what the rest of us go through.

Some Parliamentarians are actually alright
From the above, you might expect me to have a loathing resentment of MPs and this is where I have a go at them for being ignorant corrupt bastards etc. Actually, I was quite pleased with the quality and level of the debate of the third reading; it’s easy to dismiss the Commons as a bunch of old white men who are out of touch, but many of the debaters in the third reading showed either a decent understanding and experience of the complexities surrounding the bill, or if they didn’t have the technical know-how, they at least had the humility to argue it should be given greater scrutiny in committee by those that did. Digital rights mensch Tom Watson quite rightly gets the majority of the plaudits, but Nick Palmer, John Hemming and (I never though I’d say this…) Bill Cash were among those MPs who argued cogently and constructively.

Support for the third reading, apart from the government, by the way, was pretty thin – Stephen Pound trying his best to show off his groovy dad credentials by talking about finding the next Stiff Little Fingers, and Denis MacShane stumbling in after a long dinner and rambling about how all socialists should combined together to save journalism or some other such nonsense. My idea above for forcing MPs to sit in the debates they vote on could have the disadvantage in stuffing the benches with a lot more stooges spouting equally irrelevant rubbish, I suppose, so I won’t claim for one minute that it is the only solution to fixing things.

Nick Clegg blew it
The Liberal Democrats had a real chance to secure the support of a huge clutch of educated, savvy and vociferous voters tired of the usual politics and angry with the parliamentary process, possibly for a generation. Instead, he blew it. There was no strong and principled line against the bill from the Lib Dems and it was a clear sign of lack of leadership from Clegg (about whom I already had doubts); he let his spokesman for culture, media and sport jointly propose with the Tories an utterly illiberal amendment into the Lords. After a backlash from their own party members, Don Foster tried to rally a rearguard action in the Commons, but the fact only 18 Lib Dem MPs out of 63 bothered to turn up for the final vote showed how little the party leadership really cared.

You might argue that the other 45 Lib Dem MPs were busy doing something else with an election coming up, but then again, this was midway in wash-up week – they should be in the Commons to work. And this was a division where Ian Paisley turned up to vote. Yes, that Ian Paisley – 84 years old, about to retire from Parliament and politics for good to spend more time with his collection of Dana records. It was the last vote of his Commons career and he had nothing to gain from it, but even he found the principles to oppose it and made the effort to mark a vote against.

While I discreetly encourage you to reward the Lib Dem MPs who did bother to turn up in the forthcoming election (but probably not the DUP in North Antrim, it has to be said), the 45 who didn’t, and the party in general, do not get my endorsement, nor will I be voting Lib Dem this coming election. It was the final straw, and an especially poor show in the same week the Lib Dems smugly paraded their Labservative campaign, the leadership showed they lack the stomach to fully oppose something illiberal.

Ed Vaizey – what a tit, eh?
I shouldn’t just have a go at the Lib Dems. After all the Conservatives are the official Opposition and made their objections to the bill’s many flaws but agreed not to oppose the bill in an almighty stitch-up. A promise to re-review the law after they get into power at the election will probably dissolve away if they win, I’ll wager. But nothing summed the Tories up more than the dreadful Ed Vaizey and his waste of the House’s time using the debate as an excuse for a partisan and highly personal attack on those moving the amendments, rather than details of the bill. It was pathetic. Exactly what I meant when I said “rotten from the top down“. Yet Vaizey and his ilk (on both sides of the House) will be happily returned to Parliament after the election to bray for another five years.

#debill does matter
Coming back to Phil Gyford’s post on the outrage (which is one of the best post-#debill posts I’ve read) – he’s right to point out some of the shriller and more ridiculous anti-bill coverage on Twitter, like the “I choose not to recognise #debill” wankery going on – you can’t choose not to ignore a law you don’t like. But why are people angry about #debill? Is it just because we don’t want our toys taken away from us. Or is it because many of us, our livelihoods as well as our hobbies and pleasures, have come about because of the digital revolution? The music and film industries (which let’s remember are more distribution than creative) may contribute heavily to our economies (about US$5/6bn each), but that’s tiny compared to what can be affected – the telecomms industry alone in the UK is worth about US$65bn.

Start factoring in the value added to many other industries that an open, free and vibrant internet provides, and you can start seeing how frustrating it is to see the debate framed as merely being a fight to “save” our creativity from piracy with no side effects. This does not mean sacrificing all of the content distribution industries on the altar of an unrestricted internet, but it does require a realistic realisation that copyright infringement is inevitable but it is possible to survive and even thrive in a post-digital world. The digital music market is starting to turn the corner – online music sales are now outstripping the loss from physical purchases, but going back to old model of treating ordinary people like thieves and scum is not going to make them any more popular.

What about the “big” stuff?
No lawmaking procedure has gone under more scrutiny by citizens in the UK online than the progress of this bill. You can quite rightly wonder what would happen if every bill was given the same level of scrutiny. More cynically, you could point out how bad all the other bills must be, and accuse the UK digital & media community of being only concerned with their own lot and not the issues that “really” matter like schools or hospitals or wars. There is some truth in that, perhaps, but it’s not true to say the UK digital community don’t care about other aspects of how the country is governed – the #welovethenhs campaign being one example.

It’s also not true that the digital-haves are in a world of their own. I know people who are teachers, doctors, civil servants and military personnel who use services such as Twitter, delicious and Facebook to share and say things. However thanks to the responsibilities of their job, and the rules and ethics they are bound to, it makes publicly criticising or bringing politics into their workplace less easy than those of us in the digital industries (not to mention that often these sites are blocked at workplaces). From my recollection, by and large all the early bloggers working in public services were pseudonymous – and though some have voluntarily ‘come out’ and been welcomed in their organisations, others (like Night Jack) ended up being disciplined for merely telling the truth about their jobs. Stepping out of line can have its costs.

In contrast, those that had better knowledge of the digital economy and its workings occupy this space much more comfortably and a lot more of the time. And as this is a newer and more loosely-grouped alliance of interests, the people scrutinising the bill have not been able to yet create powerful trade associations or unions (not for one moment discounting the excellent work ORG have done). It’s no surprise they turned to the channels they were more familiar with to carry out their protestations. On the other hand, doctors and teachers have more established organisations such as the BMA and NUT through which they can make their own representations to government collectively without compromising professionals individually.

So just because a non-digital bill receives less scrutiny from the digerati does not necessarily mean every bill we pass receives less attention than the Digital Economy Act, especially when scrutiny may be applied through channels other than the Internet. But in principle, it would probably be a good thing if all legislation was given the same level of public dissection by experts as the Digital Economy Act. Doing so would hopefully help raise awareness among the wider public largely turned off by politics in exposing the flaws of the political process, yet be constructive at the same time – pointing out not what only was wrong but ways of improving it. This applies particularly in a Parliament which was not being hurried through the wash-up and bad legislation stood a chance of getting a more timely look by MPs.

So to produce this better scrutiny, how do we organise ourselves so that in future the experts on whatever bill is being debated, whether it be about schools, hospitals, law and order, get better access to the same tools the anti-#debill protesters had, without compromising their ability to do their jobs or their position of trust? Much of the data are there, like TheyWorkForYou and Public Whip, but no-one has quite yet built the tools or organisations to bridge these vastly useful repositories and APIs with how other, less digital, professions work and campaign. Even with the information available, the complex legal language bills are written in, and Parliament’s own quirks of procedure, are further obstacles to understanding the process and educating a wider public. Experts of all kinds – technical, legal as well as those in whatever fields the legislation affects, need to be brought together to make the information out there work to its full potential, and to make our politicians more accountable.

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7 thoughts on “Some bits and pieces on the #debill”

Thoughtful analysis. And to make one observation in regard to one of your many points:

As a group, a tribe, we ‘webby types’ for want of a better phrase did good work, ORG in partic were great, but I agree that I’m not sure were organised enough. And by that I think we might need something close to a coherent movement.

That’s not to excuse the legislators, but we needed more ORG style events and protest and proper lobbying rather than last-minute slactivism on Twitter. This bill was proposed last autumn after all.

Having been involved with politics quite closely, it’s astonishing to see how some groups effectively lobby politicians. Mass letter writing campaigns, showering MPs with cards and letter, consistent and strong attendance at surgries and then the professional lobbying techniques of meetings, receptions etc etc. They make sure their message is impossible to ignore. I don’t get the sense that every MP was bombarded.

A lot of lobbying is about informing and educating, not just persauding. I bet a good many MPs quite simply didn’t understand this bill either.

Anyway, I’ve written a bit more in my ‘Ashamed to be Labour” post re #DEBill here:

I don’t know if the Lib Dems didn’t show up because they knew this bill was a stitch-up between the Tories and Labour. But for me that wasn’t the point. They were supposedly against the bill, yet couldn’t be bothered to attend either the debate or the vote. It reflects on a distinct apathy that I’ve found the Lib Dems showing nowadays. It’s a shame because they actually have an excellent campaign this time around.

As you later acknowledge, I really would worry that restricting MPs voters rights would polarise or drive to extremes interests (and I think also increase the power of, or at least potential RoI for, lobbyists). Fixed parliamets definitely a good idea (just as other reviews, White papers etc would best be periodic, removing at least one party policitcal variable available – timing).

And the points about relative sizes of various industries really needs to made more of; the argument should have been about preparing for Digital Britain, post industrial jobs, world leader in new technologies, etc (progressive vote winners for some) as opposed to the “protecting supposedly ‘creative’ old industries” as was.

After your live twitter coverage, thanks for another useful and thought out post. (and I’m not just saying because I think I get a mention in it!)

Overall, I’d agree – a bad bill, rushed through, and we know that the police and lawyers have a habit of using bad law in unintended ways (although we also should not forget that our case law system can effectively overturn bad law when brought to trial).

A couple of points though :
The fact that the telco industry is worth vastly more is probably because there’s an industry that is even more reviled by it’s customers than the content one. They stood in the way of ISPs, then always-on connections, then VOIP – and European roaming data rates are still extortionate (and that, to me, is probably costing the EU millions in lost productivity – i.e. I won’t remote login to work when abroad, yet Americans can move around within their continental area without being penalised in the same way).

Secondly – I disagree with the idea that what the content industries largely provide is distribution. For starters, if that was their key business they wouldn’t subcontract it.
The key thing they provide is venture capital (in an area that banks and venture capitalists won’t touch, because they have no idea what will or wont succeed) and mostly sales and marketing.

Even the smallest label (like, say Singing Knives) is still way better at reaching an audience than most of the artists on it.

For the largest acts and labels – well the economics are closer to Coca Cola and soap powder (and which is, to be honest, why the artists get so little – to a degree they are the interchangeable products of marketing machines, but they see themselves as irreplaceable).

And isn’t there something faintly depressing about digital people telling creative people to look at Nigeria (or Brazil in the case of ‘Free’) as examples of how their industries can thrive – reduce your cost base to third world levels. Live in a shack. You should be doing it for art, not the money right?

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